Lock The Doors (Family)

The Richardson’s are getting together to celebrate Mom and Dad’s Anniversary. All the brothers and sisters are heading out to the family’s remote summer home in the woods for dinner and some catching up. They are completely unaware of the bloodthirsty maniacs watching them from the woods, planning their gruesome murders.

This will be a home invasion horror story in a new, experimental format where two games will be run simultaneously, one for the Family and one for the Invaders. Both games will accept applications publicly. Gameplay will be private, then we will return to public visibility once the games have concluded. This will be a short game (appx. 8 scenes) but your character most likely won’t make it to the end.

Moves

Characters will have the ability to move and interact as they like with a few restrictions.

1) A challenge will be provided at the beginning and middle of each scene, aimed at directing the players towards where the plot of the story is progressing. Characters may make as many moves and take a circuitous path towards that goal, but once it is completed that goal should be achieved.

2) Murdering another character is prohibited unless specifically allowed by the narrator (See PvP section).

3) If a situation develops that your character needs to address, assume it can be completed in one move unless the narrator presents a challenge related to it.

Player vs. Player

This story will have elements of PvP as the two sides meet and interact. It is not aimed at being a realistic simulation. It aims to recreate the feel of a horror movie. Your character will scheme, plot and struggle but sometimes, just when you think you have another character on the ropes, they might slip through your fingers. Other times it may seem obvious that you can kill another player, especially if they’re bound, trapped or unconscious. I may not allow it if the character is vital to an upcoming turn of the plot. It risks feeling contrived but I will try to minimize that as best I can. Its a story of subverting expectation, building rivalries and layering tension until if we’re lucky we reach a climactic and cathartic finale.

Plot armor exists in some form for players’ characters. You can be injured, captured and tortured but you won’t die until around Act III. This is a cooperative experiment and keeping all players around through at least 75% of the story is important. That said, you won’t know when the plot armor is lifted, and players’ characters will die.

When a character is slated to die, it will be presented as a single move challenge in the murderer’s game.

Pacing

Both games will be acting simultaneously in real time. The narrator will relay the action as quickly as possible but there will be times when players from different stories will overlap and revisions will be requested. It’s not a race, but a move you haven’t submitted may be invalidated by other player’s moves as the story progresses. The pace of the game will be maintained at about a scene per week. Each scene will be split in two. You will have a minimum of 72 hours to complete a challenge (but most of the time 96 hrs). If a challenge hasn’t been completed, I’ll progress the story based on the moves that have been submitted and there will be no penalty to the players.

Content

This will be a horror story so expect NSFW terror, psychological distress, blood and gore. If anything happens in the story that you are not comfortable with, just mention it in the comments and we will move away. Be warned, I cannot promise that the trigger won’t be present in the complimentary story. In order to protect against any serious issues I’m going to ban two things: 1) Sexual abuse/Rape, and 2) Children.